Surnames from Ships and Seafarers of Atlantic Canada

The surnames and company names in these pages are taken from the Ships
and Seafarers of Atlantic Canada CD and are derived from two British record
series, structured as three interactive databases that allow the user to
search, sort and query the data.

The first database is compiled from the Certificates of Registry for
ten major ports of Atlantic Canada, and for the port of Bermuda. The Atlantic ports include
Miramichi 1828-1914, Richibucto 1880-1914, and Saint John 1820-1914 in New
Brunswick; Halifax 1812-1889, Sydney 1820-1889, Pictou 1840-1914, Windsor
1849-1914 and Yarmouth 1840-1914 in Nova Scotia; Charlottetown 1787-1914
in Prince Edward Island; and St. John's 1820-1936 in Newfoundland. This
series contains information on the vessels registered in each port and on
their owners.

The second database is compiled from a sample of crew agreements of
vessels registered in the ports of Saint John, New Brunswick, and Yarmouth,
Windsor and Halifax, Nova Scotia for the period 1863-1914. This file contains
information on the masters and seamen who crewed the vessels, their ports of
call and voyages. In total, the sample contains information on 182,000 seamen
and 20,000 masters of Atlantic Canadian vessels.

A third database contains a one percent random sample of crew agreements
from non-Canadian (British) vessels which was compiled for comparative
purposes. The data is arranged in the same format as the file describes
above and contains 85,000 records of individual seaman and 19,000 records
of masters.

From these files over 63,000 unique surnames and company names emerged
and it is these names which appear in the following web pages.